Various materials are used for constructing boxes, shelves, pallets, and other such objects that are used to hold and/or support a weight of various items. Materials such as paper, wood, metal and plastic can be used in the design and manufacture of such items. The use of paper materials can be cost competitive to materials such as wood, metal, and plastic, while at the same time offering benefits that are not available through the use of traditional wood materials. The benefits of using paper materials are several fold. Paper products can be made lighter than wood, plastic, or metal products, and when formed into a honeycomb structure may have remarkable strength.
Further, paper products can be made biodegradable to allow for disposal without penalty charges or prohibitions from land fills or they can be baled and recycled to paper companies. Because of the ease of working with paper materials and the availability of various honeycomb structures, products can be manufactured in a variety of shapes and sizes to meet any particular requirements.
Panels known in the prior art often employed mechanical folding or pressing methods to form sheet material around the edges panel core. These methods resulted in imprecisely formed edges, which may be rounded, not sharp, with relatively large radii.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,269,219 shows panels that are covered with corrugated material which was scored prior to folding. Scoring is beneficial prior to folding corrugated material, such as cardboard, because the fold is not straight otherwise. Corrugated material, however, is thicker and less dense than solid sheet material, and thus does not have the same beneficial strength versus size characteristics as does solid sheet material.